


Truth Hurts

by were_lemur



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Hates Witches, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt No Comfort, Non-Penatrative Sexual Assault, Soulless Sam Winchester, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 17:33:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6204454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/were_lemur/pseuds/were_lemur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean is captured and tortured by a witch.  Under normal circumstances, he knows Sam would rescue him.  But the soulless thing that looks like his brother?  He can't count on rescue.</p>
<p>(More detailed warning in the end notes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth Hurts

The witch strokes his cheek with her gloved fingers, and Dean screams his lungs empty.

She pulls her hand away, and he has just enough time to brace himself, to grab onto the chains holding him to the crudely welded frame, to grit his teeth so he doesn't scream when she presses his hand against the side of his throat. It feels like he's being stabbed by a thousand knives, every one of them white-hot and coated with acid.

She drops her hand, and cocks her head to the side, and for a moment she reminds him of Sam, not his Sam but the Sam he has to deal with now, of Pinocchio asking why it would even matter if he's a real boy.

He breathes deeply, and assesses himself. The pain stopped just as soon as she pulled her hand away, but he's still manacled hand and foot and the witch is still looking at him like he's a frog she's going to dissect, except the frog is usually dead by the time that happens.

If Sam -- the real Sam -- was here, he'd be racing to his rescue, and Dean's strategy would be to buy time for him to get here. But the soulless thing that looks like his brother? He doesn't know.

So he has to assume he's on his own. 

He focuses on the witch. On the gloves. They're tan, and there are divots on the tops of the fingertips. Where the nails would be. And suddenly he realizes that they are nail beds. "Is that human skin?"

The witch smiles. It doesn't make her any less creepy. 

"Between the years of 1967 and 1994, a serial killer named Daniel Rhys terrorized the northern part of the state. He would kidnap prostitutes and torture them to death with various sharp implements over the course of days. He was never caught; instead he had a stroke. He suffered massive brain damage, and ended up spending the last sixteen years of his life in a nursing home.

"Couldn't've happened to a nicer guy."

"His body would have gone unclaimed," the witch said. "Except somehow, it disappeared from the funeral parlor. Since there was nobody to complain, it was just swept under the rug."

"There are easier ways to get a pair of gloves."

"These?" She laughs. "These are just the proof-of-concept. I have the rest of the skin still waiting."

"So you're gonna make yourself a dead guy suit? That's creepy, even by witch standards."

She shrugs. "Besides being able to cause pain with just a touch, I'm actually stronger. Not superhumanly, but enough to do this -- " She grabs the collar of his t-shirt with both hands and rips it open, then stands back to look at him. "You know what? You might just be too pretty to kill."

"Glad to hear it."

"Maybe I'll just break you instead. Leave you an empty, gibbering -- but still decorative -- shell of a man."

"I don't think you've got thirty years." Hopefully, she doesn't even have thirty minutes. Unless the soulless wonder's decided to stop and bang a waitress or something.

She reaches out, and -- careful not to touch him, not yet -- undoes his belt buckle. Then the button on his jeans.

Braced or not, this time he does scream.

By the time she's done fondling him, his throat is raw and he's sagging back against the rebar frame. But he glares at her and pulls himself upright, because defiance may be all he has left, but it's better than nothing.

"You're pathetic, you know that? You can't even torture a guy without an assist from the other side."

She presses both hands into him then, and this time, she doesn't let up until there's nothing left in his lungs and he starts to drift toward merciful unconsciousness, and then she pulls her hands away just long enough for him to suck in a breath before touching him again, and again, and again until he can't scream anymore, but somebody else screams for him, once, before the sound is cut off, and he doesn't need to scream anymore anyway. The witch has stopped touching him and maybe if he stays still, she'll think he's passed out, and that's a good plan because he doesn't think he can move. 

"Dean, can you hear me?"

Sam? He means to say it aloud, but his body isn't co-operating.

Fingers press against the side of his neck, and his abused nervous system overreacts; he jerks away, trying to scream with vocal cords so raw nothing comes out, but then he realizes that it doesn't hurt.

Sam is checking his pulse.

He manages to get his eyes open, but his body won't obey when he tries to raise his head. He feels like he's just run about three marathons back-to-back, his wrists and shoulders ache because, he realizes, he's got nearly all his weight on them, and oh yeah, his frigging jeans are at half-mast.

Sam notices, too; he pulls Dean's pants up and tucks him in as impersonally as if he's a doctor and Dean is the patient, and right now one of them should be making a joke to defuse the awkwardness of junk-touching but even if Dean could think of something, he's not sure his voice will work. 

Sam undoes the manacles on Dean's ankles, and somehow, Dean finds the strength to get his feet under him, so he at least won't fall down when Sam picks the locks on the wrist cuffs.

When his left hand is freed, it drops limply to his side. The pins and needles start almost immediately. Sam frees his other arm, but rather than letting it fall, he drapes it across his own shoulders, and for a moment, Dean is tempted to accept the help. To pretend that it's really Sam.

But he knows it's not, and that hurts worse than anything the witch could've possibly done to him.

**Author's Note:**

> TW Sexual Assault: the witch fondles Dean painfully as part of the torture


End file.
